So you want to be a food blogger? Don’t do anything until you have read this! Here are my 10 top tips for wannabe food bloggers. (These are the tips I wish I’d read when I started my food blog back in 2015!)
This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!
10 top tips for wannabe food bloggers
So you want to be a food blogger? Don’t do anything until you have read this! Food blogging can be a hugely rewarding – and lucrative – career choice. But as the food blogging scene gets increasingly competitive, it’s becoming ever more important to set things up ‘right’ from the start to maximize your chance of success.
To help you out, I’ve pulled together my 10 top tips for wannabe food bloggers. These are the tips I wish I’d read when I started this food blog back in 2015!
These tips have been drawn from my own experiences (I’ve had to learn most of these lessons the hard way!) and also the experiences of my students (I’ve taught over 2000 bloggers how to turn their blogs into successful and profitable businesses, through my online courses and ebooks) and members of my blogging Facebook Group – the Productive Blogging Community.
1. Spend some time reading other food blogs before you start your own
Oh how I wish I’d done more of this before I started Easy Peasy Foodie! I did do a little bit of reading around, back in 2015 when I first started this blog, but I didn’t do nearly enough. Many people ‘think’ they know what food blogging involves, but in my experience they are nearly always wrong!
Writing a food blog is very different to writing, say, a magazine article or a recipe book. So, you need to get familiar fast with what a food blog looks like, what it contains and how a recipe post is written.
For example, many people assume that it’s sufficient to take a quick photo of your dinner and upload it to your blog with a short blurb and the recipe… it’s not! As soon as you start reading food blogs you’ll realize there’s a lot more to it than that!
Better still, as you read those food blogs, jot down notes on the following:
- Things you like (anything – the layout, the tone, the photography, the photos, the topics)
- Things you don’t like (as above – What irritates you? What do you think could have been done better? How would you do it differently?)
- Good content ideas. There’s no copyright in ideas! Jot down every blog post / recipe title that makes you think ‘Oooh yes, that’s a good one!’ Obviously when you come to write it you will use your own ideas and your own words, and you may well give it a different title too, but by reading established blogs you will begin to get a good stockpile of content ideas which you will find invaluable when you come to start writing posts on your blog.
- Anything else! Literally anything else that strikes you as you read – a good idea for a blog name, an element you’d like to include in your blog, a question you need to find the answer for… write it down!
How do you decide which food blogs to read? The absolute best way is to google the kind of recipes that you are thinking of including on your food blog and look at the blogs that appear on the first page of Google. For most food bloggers ‘Google’ is their biggest traffic source… in other words, most of their visitors arrive on their recipes having first done a Google search. So by doing a Google search on the sort of recipes you are thinking of publishing on your blog, you’ll find the blogs that are getting the most traffic and doing the best job – it’s best to learn from the best!
(Take care when you do this, though… don’t look at the websites of celebrity chefs, food magazines or huge media outlets – they do things quite differently! You want to look at food blogs. If you’re not sure, take a look at the ‘about me’ page… that should make it clear whether you’re looking at a food blogger or some huge corporation!)
FURTHER READING
- What is a blog and how does it work? Blogging explained!
- 35 BIG mistakes new bloggers make (and how to fix them!)
2. Choose a niche…very carefully
If you spend some time looking at other blogs, you will notice that some of the very successful food blogs pretty much blog about all kinds of food, and it’s easy to think having a general blog about food is the best way forward… However, you will also notice that most of these general food bloggers have been blogging for years and have made a name for themselves. They probably also started out when there were fewer food bloggers around and so food blogging was less competitive. These days it is virtually impossible to succeed at food blogging unless you choose to focus on a particular niche.
What do I mean by a niche? I mean choosing a fairly tight theme for your blog. For example: easy vegan dinners, gluten free baking, keto for beginners, 15 minute family friendly dinners, authentic Mexican food, healthy slow-cooker meals, air-fryer dinners for busy families on a budget, fancy cake decorating, easy recipes to make with kids…
A tight niche will help you compete against bigger bloggers on Google, it will help you build up a loyal following of fans (rather than just transactional traffic that gets one recipe and leaves), it will help you get ‘known’ quicker and hopefully become a go-to expert in your niche… and ultimately it will help you earn more money!
BUT be very careful what you choose… If you are serious about food blogging, and if your blog is a success, this will be your life for a very long time! You may be passionate about keto now, but will you be so keen in 2 years’ time?
Another consideration is whether your chosen theme is likely go out of fashion. A vegetarian blog almost certainly won’t, but an air-fryer blog might.
You should also consider whether your chosen niche will work all year round – slow cooking is great in the winter, but will you be able to convince people it’s a good idea in high summer too?
And you should also ask yourself whether enough people are going to be interested in your topic… You may be passionate about recipes involving goat meat – but are there enough others out there who are too, and who are looking for goat meat recipes on the internet? A tight niche is good… but it is possible to go too far the other way and pick something that hardly anyone is googling!
If you are unsure about what niche to pick, think about what YOU are passionate about… What do you LOVE to cook? What do other people compliment you on? What is your USP? What’s your ‘thing’ when it comes to cooking?
Once you’ve picked a good niche, you should also do more research on blogs in that niche. You want to get an idea of what is already being covered in that niche, and what you could bring to the table. Do you have a unique or different angle on your niche?
For me ‘easy recipes’ was an obvious choice. I was always simplifying recipes… Any recipe I found in a book or a magazine, I would always try and make it easier to do. But I was (and still am) a passionate foodie. So to create a site all about easy to make, great tasting recipes was perfect for me… I also knew it would be something that would always be popular and plenty of people would be interested in – after all our lives only seem to be getting busier!
But honestly, if I was starting today, I would not go so broad. I would niche down even tighter. The food blogging landscape is so competitive these days, your best chance of success lies in you choosing a tight niche and building up a loyal following of readers who are also passionate about that topic. Once you’ve done that, then you could potentially expand into adjacent niches.
Now once you have a niche you need to think about a name…
FURTHER READING
3. Choose a name…very carefully
One of the first decisions you will have to make when starting a new blog is what to call it. This is a tricky decision and one of the most important you will make. Many bloggers choose their name on a whim and only later realise that their name is difficult to spell/pronounce, limits what they can blog about, or is downright cringeworthy!
I recently asked the bloggers in my Productive Blogging Community about this and the majority of them said that they didn’t like their blog name or would change it if they could go back in time.
On the flip side, though, naming your blog is also a huge opportunity. Choosing the right name can mean appealing to the right people, getting recognised and remembered, and even help your blog get Google traffic!
My top tips are to go for a name that is likely to appeal to your target audience, is clear what it’s about (most people would instantly understand what ‘Easy Peasy Foodie’ is likely to be about, for example) and is easy to say and spell. But also, I’d make sure it doesn’t pigeon-hole you to much into a really specific niche… just in case you want to change direction / expand out into related niches in the future.
Another consideration is whether your chosen blog name is available as a domain name. A domain name is your website’s address/URL. For example the domain name for this blog is easypeasyfoodie.com. To check whether your preferred blog name is available to buy, run it through the checker on a domain name checker*.
I also strongly recommend going with a domain name which is all one word and ends .com. These tend to come across more professionally and will serve you better in the future.
FURTHER READING
4. Decide whether to go hosted or self-hosted
Hosted vs Self-Hosted is another really important decision when first starting out.
With a hosted blog, you are essentially getting a one stop shop solution. You deal with one company and get your domain name (e.g. easypeasyfoodie.com), hosting (where your blog ‘lives’) and blogging software (all the stuff that makes the blog work) all from that one company. This makes things simple, but it’s can also be restrictive and risky – technically they own your blog and could delete it if they feel it is in violation of their terms of service. Hosted options include Squarespace, Wix, Blogger and WordPress.com
Self-hosted blogging is more of a DIY solution. You buy a domain name, pay for someone to host it, and install the software (WordPress.org) yourself. Though these days, a good host will do all this for you, or at least help you to do it. This makes things slightly more complicated, but gives you more flexibility and more security (you own your blog, no-one can take it away from you). There are a number of self-hosted options, but most bloggers opt for WordPress.org. WordPress.org is basically the software, you then have to pay a for a host (where your blog lives). Hosts include names like SiteGround, BlueHost, GoDaddy, BigScoots etc.
If you are certain that blogging will only ever be a hobby and/or if you are not sure whether blogging is right for you, and if you are not bothered by the potential restrictions, then a hosted blog might be the right choice for you.
However, if you are starting a blog with the intention of making money and growing a business, or if you think you might want to make money with your blog in the future, I would definitely advise you to start a self-hosted WordPress blog.
FURTHER READING
- Hosted vs self-hosted: which is best for your blog?
- How to start a self-hosted WordPress blog – free training
- How much does it REALLY cost to start a blog?
5. Think about how you will structure your blog
This will save you a whole load of headaches later on. So many bloggers begin just by writing any old thing and as a result their posts are a complete jumble of all sorts of different topics. But readers (and search engines) like order and structure. You don’t really need a full-blown content strategy yet, but do start to think about how you will break down your main topic into categories.
So, for example, perhaps you’ve decided to start a vegan family recipes blog. You might break it down into 5 topics: breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snacks.
Or perhaps you’ve decided to start a gluten-free desserts blog. Your categories might be: bread, cakes, biscuits, cheesecakes, traybakes and pies.
Having categories makes your blog easier to navigate, makes it more focused and also really helps with SEO (SEO stands for search engine optimization – AKA getting Google to like you and send you lots of traffic).
6. Brainstorm possible blog posts
This is really important. Why? Because it will tell you 2 things: Do you have enough blog post ideas for a blog in this niche? And will you enjoy writing about this subject? If you find after half an hour of brainstorming content ideas you only have 3 ideas, then maybe you need to pick another niche. If on the other hand, you find yourself desperately scribbling down ideas until your hand aches, you’ve probably chosen the right topic!
So how do you go about it? I recommend grabbing a large piece of paper and writing the names of your categories at the top. Under each category write your recipe ideas. Aim to have around 10 ideas under each heading. Though by all means write more if you’ve got them.
If you choose 5 categories and come up with 10 recipe ideas for each – that’s enough blog post ideas for a whole year!
A word of caution, though. So many new bloggers just blog about whatever recipes they fancy making. This is a big mistake! If you want your blog to earn a good income, you need to think about what your target audience wants to read NOT what you want to write about. Hopefully, if you have chosen your niche well, there will be a good amount of overlap between those things. But it’s an important mindset shift you need to make if you want your blog to be successful.
I also highly recommend doing keyword research before you make any final decisions about which recipes you will publish on your blog. Keyword research is all about finding recipe ideas that lots of people are searching for, but not too many people have written about… or in other words, aren’t too competitive. (You don’t stand a chance of ranking on page 1 of Google if page 1 is dominated by famous bloggers, celebrity chefs and huge media outlets… and if your recipe does not rank on page 1 of Google you are unlikely to get much traffic!)
7. Get a good camera and start practising
Photography is so important to a food blog… I massively underestimated it when I first started out. Your food photography is essentially the ‘marketing’ for your recipe. The more beautiful your food photography, the more people will think your food tastes nice. Or to put it the other way round, you can have the most delicious recipes ON THE PLANET, but if your food photography is rubbish, no one will try your recipes.
My biggest recommendation to any wannabe (or newbie) food blogger is to buy the best camera you can afford (no, your phone is not good enough – even the fanciest iPhone doesn’t take good enough photos for a food blog) and start practising with it before you even start blogging… Take photos of everything: your breakfast, your coffee, the kids dinner… as well as your best recipes. Pretty much the number one regret I hear from food bloggers is they didn’t take food photography seriously enough in the early days.
If you want to learn more about food photography, I highly recommend these books:
- Creative Food Photography*
- Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots*
- Plate to Pixel: Digital Food Photography and Styling*
And this is the camera and lens I recommend for a new food blogger:
I realise that might sound like a lot of money to spend on a brand new blog, but honestly it will make such a huge difference to your blogging success and income. In fact, I can’t think of a single successful food blogger who doesn’t use a DSLR camera for their food photography, but I could give you the names of dozens, if not hundreds, of food bloggers who wished they had bought a decent camera and taken food photography seriously from the start… and are now having to go back through hundreds of old blog posts updating their old photographs. (I should know – I was one of them… I had to update over 100 on this website!)
8. Figure out how you will make money BEFORE you start
So many people start food blogs and then figure out how they will make money much later… Or worse, think that if they just start a food blog that money will just land in their laps magically. (It won’t!)
If you are starting a food blog with the aim of making money, you essentially are starting a small business. That means you need to treat it like a business from Day 1! And that means figuring out how your blog will make money and having a strong monetization strategy in place from Day 1.
Blogs typically make money from a combination of:
- Traditional advertising
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored posts
- Digital products (like ebooks and courses)
- Services (for example, coaching or freelance writing)
I highly recommend focusing on affiliate marketing and digital products in the early days. These are the easiest ways to make money as a new blogger and they are also passive monetization methods – meaning you’re not trading your time for money, so your income can easily scale (and you can make money in your sleep!)
9. Don’t give up the day job…yet!
You read many things on the internet about bloggers who earn millions… I’m afraid to tell you they are the exception. While it is completely possible to make a good living from a food blog, blogging is not a ‘get rich quick’ scheme and blogging is certainly not a magic way of making money! It requires hard work and patience – most bloggers typically do not earn much in their first year blogging. So, unless you are in the fortunate position of not needing to make much (if any) money for a while, don’t give up your day job just yet.
However, the beauty of blogging is it can be done as a ‘side-hustle’ to start with… I know many food bloggers who started that way and were eventually able to ditch the 9-5 and are now full-time bloggers. And, in the fullness of time, if you work hard, do the right things (see below) and persevere, blogging can be a very lucrative and rewarding career!
10. Follow a proven plan!
There are two ways to start a food blog… You can DIY it and hope it works out, or you can follow a plan by someone who knows what you REALLY need to do and what you really DON’T need to do… plus what all the potential pitfalls are and how to avoid them! Starting a new food blog can feel very daunting and overwhelming… and it’s so easy to make expensive mistakes.
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I’m not saying this to show off, but to show you what’s possible.
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In this free video training, I am going to walk you step-by-step through how to start a new blog the right way. What you need to do to succeed… and what NOT to do! What’s really worth putting the time and effort into… and what’s a waste of time and money.
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Disclosure
*This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!
Disclaimer
**Sadly there are no guarantees in blogging and in business… How much you will earn from your blog depends on you – the niche you choose, the quality of the blog posts you write, how hard you work and a thousand other variables. I cannot – and do not – promise you any specific level of income. But if you follow the steps in this training, $1000 per month from your blog by the end of your first year blogging is very achievable.
Siim | HappyFoods Tube says
Thank you for great tips. Its really hard to grow social media followers in this days. I think its more easier to be seen in recipe sharing sites like Foodgawker or Tastespotting. Do you have any experience with them?
Eb Gargano says
Thanks, Siim. (Great name by the way!) Only a little – I’ve had a few photos accepted by both Tastespotting and Foodgawker and I definitely have seen some visits from them, but I get more visits via social media at the moment. I always submit my photos to Tastespotting and Foodgawker, but I also promote all my posts on my social channels too. And I spend time actually being social! Tastespotting and Foodgawker are great way to grow your site if you take good photos, but growing your social media is important too – and I find social media is not just about growth, it’s also about being friendly and having fun. In my opinion, blogging should be fun!! Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Eb 🙂
Angela / Only Crumbs Remain says
I wish I’d come across a post like this before I stared my food blog Eb! You’ve included so many invaluable hints and tips which will definitely be useful to a new blogger (food or otherwise). It took me ages to come up with my blog’s name, and I’m so glad that I took that time to brain storm my idea and then cross check them for availability on a URL selling site rather than just going with the first name which jumped into my head…..quite often my better ideas come when I least expect it like when I’m drying my hair or about to nod off to sleep so I always have a note book & pen to hand to capture the idea.
Angela x
Eb Gargano says
Me too!! That’s exactly why I wrote this post…there must be hundreds of people in the same position as you and I were last year…thinking about starting a food blog…and this is exactly the advice I would have wanted to read!! It actually didn’t take me all that long to choose a name – the name came to me whilst I was brainstorming and I thought – ‘well that will already have been taken’, tried it in the name checker on GoDaddy and it was available!! I ummed and aahed for about a day (during which I also designed my logo, which just came to me in my head and wouldn’t leave) and I definitely knew it was the right one when I started to get worried that someone else would get it before me…I snapped it up the next day!! I happen to think, by the way, that you have one of the best food blog names out there 🙂 I just think it works on all sorts of levels and it makes me smile! I always find my best ideas come to me when there is no notebook around (I am the notebook queen – I have about 7 on the go at any given time) and when I finally get near a notebook the idea has gone – or at least that’s my excuse 😉 Eb x
Angela / Only Crumbs Remain says
Aw thank you Eb, that’s so sweet of you to say 🙂 I had a full page of names that I was playing around. I’d read them out to Mr E & my parents etc to gauge their reaction and none of them really had any impact or response. But whilst I was drying my hair the name ‘Only Crumbs Remain’ came to me (though my brother insists on calling it Only The Crumbs Remain which I guess is grammatically correct) and everyone I suggested it to responded to it. I must say, that I too felt the same once the name pinged into my head….I HAD to buy that domain name before anybody else. I too like my note books, I have 4 on going at the moment (plus an electronic notebook but I do prefer the good old fashioned pen & paper.) Are each of your 7 note books for different aspects – recipe ideas, stats etc or perhaps one for each room of your home or even one for each day of the week? I usually manage to have a notebook to hand but there are occasions when my hands are messy and I don’t want to dirty the book so if Mr E is available I have been known to dictate what’s popped into my head (maybe a paragraph or two for a post I may be working on) and he then, bless him, scribes it down for me!
Thank you also for including my blog in your inspiration page 🙂
Angela x
Eb Gargano says
It’s genuinely meant and thank goodness you didn’t call it ‘Only The Crumbs Remain ‘! Your version makes for a much better blog name. You do have me totally foxed now, though, as to whether Only Crumbs Remain is grammatically correct or not. It sounds fine but I can’t explain why…I will ask the grammar pedant (AKA Mr G) when he comes home! It sounds perfect as a blog name at any rate.
Regarding notebooks. I have a little one in my handbag…for any good idea that his me when I’m out, I have a recipe development one, a to do list one, one for ideas for Easy Peasy Foodie – posts / design improvements etc., one for family admin…and I may have over estimated when I said 7 😉 Though I do love the idea of having one for stats…
You have been in my inspiration page for a long time! 🙂
Eb x
Martin @ The Why Chef says
Oh man I wish I’d sussed social media first! A year in and I’m actually using twitter less and have had a reminder in my to do list to learn Pinterest for a solid 8 months… :'(
I should have spent more time reading good lists like this rather than diving in head first!
Eb Gargano says
Oh me too Martin! I wish I had read something like this a year ago! But like you I just wanted to get started on my blog and didn’t spend anywhere near enough time planning and preparing!! Pinterest is really easy – just do it! You are probably going to hate me for saying this but…I recently read that bloggers should spend about 20% writing blog content and 80% promoting it in various ways! I probably don’t do quite that, but I do notice there is a distinct correlation between promotion and pageviews!!
Martin @ The Why Chef says
Oooh I definitely do the 20% writing my blog bit! 80% eating, talking about it, cooking, watching Game of Thrones instead of learning Pinterest… It’s now my mission for May/June to get in to Pinterest!
Eb Gargano says
Haha! Yes I do a lot of the above too! Well not Game of Thrones – mainly cooking shows! Either that or trashy 80s chick flicks… Let me know when you are on Pinterest and I’ll follow you 🙂 Have fun pinning! I warn you now – it becomes addictive!!
Mummy in a TuTu (@mummyinatutu) says
I dont think some of these are specific to food – I think quite a few could be said for blogging in general. The tip about going through the top food blogs and making notes is excellent.
#brilliantblogpost
Eb Gargano says
No, you are quite right – a lot of these could absolutely work for other kinds of blogs too. And that tip about looking at top blogs and learning from them is a good one to keep doing! Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments 🙂 Eb x
Choclette says
What a very useful and well thought out post. I so wish I’d had something like this when I started. But the sad truth is, way back in 2009 I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a food blog. I just started mine on a whim and then found out there was a whole world out there I didn’t know about. Things would certainly have been a lot easier if I’d read your tips back then. I really enjoyed blogging about chocolate, but eventually I did get a bit weary of it and that;s one of the problems of being in too narrow a niche. Changing my blog just over a year ago has pretty much been like starting again. I would definitely have down things differently in retrospect.
Happy Blogiversary BTW.
Eb Gargano says
Aw, thanks Choclette! I think there are a lot of things I would change if I could go back in time…I really wanted to write this post to help others not make the mistakes I made and give anyone out there who wants to start a blog all the benefit of my hindsight!! The truth of it is, though, that many of us start on a whim…I certainly did! The thing I love about blogging is that it is flexible, you can change your mind or make mistakes and it’s not the end of the world – like you say about starting with chocolate and then branching out into other things. Stuff like that is totally possible…and indeed normal! I love the fact that I can try things out and see what happens…and if it doesn’t work out it’s not a problem…and is soon buried under a pile of new posts anyway! Thanks for your kind comments and the anniversary wishes 🙂 Eb x
Johanna @ Green Gourmet Giraffe says
Congrats on celebrating your first blog anniversary – have just read through your posts and really enjoyed them – when I started blogging in 2007 there was no social media and very little advertising and sponsorship which is perhaps why they are still not the main focus of my blog. I agree that choosing a name is important – it should stand out without being too long and should give room to change as I notice that many blogs that have been going for years often have changes of various sorts. I also think being open to change is healthy as blogs can only survive changes in life if they can bend a little.
And one of the comments I would make that people should consider with hosted vs self-hosted is that if you decide to do self-hosted be prepared to commit to it because if you don’t keep up paying the domain name your blog disappears – I have had some sad moments going to look at blogs I love and checking out their recipes only to find they have just vanished.
Eb Gargano says
Thanks for your kind comments. It’s really interesting hearing from the perspective of a much more seasoned blogger! A good point re: Hosted vs Self-Hosted – that’s so sad that some blogs have disappeared. Self-Hosted is definitely a financial commitment, albeit a small one. Eb x